I wasn’t
over impressed with Hunter my first time through season 2, but I wound up really
liking him the following season and found that his earlier stuff improves a lot
on rewatch. Now, I see that there’s
plenty to like, and I can’t even pinpoint what I didn’t care for him at
first. (Some Hunter-related spoilers.)
Hunter’s
introduction to the team, as a mercenary who hooks up with S.H.I.E.L.D. through
Hartley, is somewhat at odds with who we discover he is. Some of the others (especially Coulson and
May) are wary about his loyalties, figuring his allegiance only extends as far
as his payout. They treat him with
skepticism and have this perpetual air of waiting for the other shoe to drop,
for the day he’ll sell them out to someone with bigger pockets, and to an
extent, Hunter encourages this line of thinking.
But
really, Hunter isn’t a detached hired gun only in it for the money. Neither, however, is he a loyal agent to the
cause (a major reason he so often crosses swords with May.) His first priority lies, not in the cash or
the work, but in the people. His first big
clash with Coulson comes after Hartley and Idaho are killed in the field,
feeling that Coulson sent them in too blindly and then put Hartley’s life
second to the mission once it was clear she was in serious trouble. And I’d wager that the main reason he stays
on after that experience is due to the relationships he’s already started developing
with others on the team like Trip and Mack.
While the
show continues to play up the “is he trustworthy?” angle for a while, this is
what Hunter’s really about. That’s why
he tells May in season 3, “I’d take a bullet for any one of you. Not for the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the wall,
for you.” His first interest is pretty much always in
his intense, messy relationship with Bobbi, but he cares a lot about all of
them. But like I said earlier re: May, that can be weirdly discomfiting to some
on the team, because it means Hunter’s actions are less logical than a
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent’s necessarily should be.
He’ll go off-mission to follow a hunch, protect a team member at the
expense of the objective, or chase a personal vendetta. Even though, if we’re being honest, everyone on the team is pretty
emotionally compromised much of the time, it seems to throw them off more with
Hunter, probably because they still tie him to that idea of a mercenary.
Skill-wise,
he fits right in with most of the other field agents. Formidable (though generally preferring guns
to hand-to-hand stuff,) smart, gutsy, and improvises well (just not the way
Coulson would always want him to.) My
personal favorite of Hunter’s skillsets, though, is his undercover work. He’s not sleek and seamless at it like Bobbi
or May, but Hunter is always the most entertaining
person to watch undercover. He does it
with such laidback dismissiveness, dropping easily into character with this
don’t-give-a-damn air about him. I love
it when he enters the ATCU as a blasé hacker on a federal leash – despite his
complete lack of computer savviness – and I get a kick out of how stubbornly he
maintains the story that he and Bobbi are just a pair of vacationers on a
late-night mushroom hunt (for soup, doncha know) when they’re caught by Russian
military outside a secret base. Now that
he and Bobbi have parted ways with the team, that’s what I miss most about him.
Oh, and I
was thrilled to see Hunter’s brief return earlier this season to help Fitz out
of a jam, and that thrill is a testament to how much I’ve come around on his
character. The two guys have such
different sensibilities that it’s a blast to see them improvising missions
together, and I love that Fitz gets Hunter’s attention by ragging on his
favorite team with letters to the editor in football (soccer) magazines – too perfect.
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